1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to process control systems and more specifically to a technique of configuring wireless field devices for process control plants.
2. Related Art
A process control plant generally contains several equipment (e.g., boilers, filters, furnaces, coolers, etc.), which are used to implement a desired control process (e.g., oil refinery, manufacturing operation, etc.). Each equipment in turn generally includes devices (often called field devices as they may be deployed in a decentralized manner ‘in the field’) such as actuators (such as valves and switches) and sensors, which are specifically operable facilitating various manufacturing objectives.
For example, a temperature sensor may be deployed as a field device to take measurements of a boiler and provide the measurements back to a control station controlling the operation of the process control plant. As field devices are often physically located far from the control station, they may be implemented as wireless devices (which communicate on wireless paths). By providing wireless communication path, wired paths may potentially be avoided (or complemented with wire-based paths for redundancy), thereby simplifying the deployment and management of process control plants.
There is often a need to configure wireless field devices. For example, each device may need to be configured consistent with control strategies sought to be implemented in conjunction with the control stations. For example, a temperature sensor may be required to take temperature measurements at regular time intervals or at the end of some event such as a change in the pressure inside a boiler, and provide the information to another element which acts upon the information.
Therefore, such information (duration of time interval, or a critical pressure value inside the boiler) may be provided to the temperature sensor consistent with a corresponding control strategy. The wireless field devices may need to be configured with other information (such as identifiers/names, etc.)
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.